Oppo Find 7a landing in the UK this month, pre-order price just £330

The Oppo Find 7 may not be as fashionable as the usual suspects from the likes of Samsung, Sony, HTC and Apple, but on a spec-by-spec basis it surely has to rank as the most impressive new smartphone announced this year.

Sadly, it won't be coming to the UK, but Oppo has decided to throw us a bone by at least giving us the lesser Find 7a instead, and you can pre-order it right now for just £330.

The full-fat Find 7 isn't actually out yet either, but when it does it'll focus its efforts on Asian markets, who'll be able to take advantage of such high end features as a 5.5in 2560 x 1440 display, 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM and a 50MP-ish camera (in reality, 13MP with benefits).

Alas, such high-end fare is not for us. Instead, we'll have to “make do” with a 5.5in display at only 1080p, the Snapdragon 800 chipset at a slightly more sedate 2.3GHz, just the 2GB of RAM, together with 16GB of storage with microSD support (pre-order customers will get a 32GB card thrown in for nada).

Camera-wise you get the same 13MP/5MP combo as on the Find 7a – that means the same ability to stitch together those larger 50MP images – but you lose out on being able to capture 4K video.

The battery is a necessarily meaty 2800mAh in size with fast-charging abilities, but you'll have to make do with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean for the immediate future, with no word yet on when an update to Android 4.4 KitKat might be on the cards.

You can pre-order the Find 7a in either black or white directly from Oppo and aside from that 32GB microSD card, your £330 will also include a spare battery and an Easy-Cover case. Units are expected to start shipping before the end of the month.

UPDATE: At the time of writing the pre-order page is down. We assume it's just a temporary glitch, but we'll keep an eye on things and update if necessary.

According to the specification on the OppStyle site, the International version of the Find 7a will come with a 'Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AB Quad-core 2.3GHz' and from various internet sources, it is equipped with the ability to record in '4K'